Planning & Designing Sustainable Green Homes

Looking for a cool renewable energy commute to work that isn't an electric car? check out the Scrooser e-bike, known as the "Harley Davidson for sidewalks". Enter the Scrooser. The Scrooser is a German engineered electric scooter / e-bike with a top speed of 24 km (15 mph) and a range of 35.5 km (22 miles). It works…

The sight of a tree falling can easily trigger something even in the most unlikely environmentalist. Ignoring that visual, wood can be a much greener material choice than many others if you put some thought into selection. Finding sustainable wood: We live in a country with over 400 million hectares of forest, so…

Undeniably the most ecological framing material, wood is both a renewable resource and one that serves to reduce greenhouse gas emissions when used in place of other materials. The environmental advantages of wood frame construction: As a renewable building material, wood has many advantages over other materials…

After certifying 1000 LEED buildings nationwide, the CaGBC takes a look at exactly what's saved when we build to LEED standard rather than to code. The results speak for themselves. After certifying its first LEED project in 2005, the CaGBC collected data over the next eight years, measuring the direct impact LEED…

Canada's premier sustainable building organization offers free green building registration and certification to charitable building projects. Working with charitable housing groups like Habitat for Humanity, the CaGBC will administer free registrations and certifications under the internationally-recognized…

The Living Building Challenge is the most rigorous and comprehensive of all building rating systems, certified on merit alone after 12 months of occupancy. What is the Living Building Challenge? The Living Building Challenge is the most rigorous and comprehensive of all building rating systems. Performance…

Salvage companies are pulling up logs from the bottoms of rivers, where a century and a half of log drives has left behind a lot of great wood. As a kid growing up along the Gatineau River in Quebec, watching tugboats pulling log booms down the river was commonplace, and logs that got loose were a great source of…

The Archipod: Beautiful, Functional & Environmentally Sound. I'm sure we can all agree that as the cost and inconvenience of commuting to work continues to escalate, the advances in networking technology are making the possibility of working from home a viable alternative to schlepping ourselves to the office. When…

Sustainable building practices can reach the stage where cost effectiveness becomes questionable & when money should be used optimally. The "Damn Near" is a Passive House on a Budget to prove the point. What is a Passive House? The term 'passive house' refers to an extremely high performing energy efficient home…

Far from the days of being a fringe element trend, the benefits and necessity of sustainable building practices are now sweeping across the globe. Courtesy of the USGBC , the following is a guest post by Harvey M. Bernstein, Vice President of Industry Insights & Alliances, McGraw-Hill Construction and John Mandyck…

Integrating Douglas Fir timber frames and structural insulated panels, FabCab offers universal accessibility in its eco-friendly homes, cabins and accessory dwelling units (ADUs). FabCab’s approach to sustainability is simple - design healthy, efficient environments to accommodate varied lifestyles. Dedicated to…